Timing jitter in semiconductor lasers under pseudorandom work modulation.

Timing jitter of semiconductor lasers under pseudorandom word modulation was studied at 1 Gb/s. For lasers biased above threshold the timing jitter was Gaussian in distribution with a turn-on timing jitter amplitude tau = 2 sigma = 30 +- 6ps. But for lasers biased below threshold, the turn-on timing jitter showed two peaks of Gaussian distribution of amplitude tau = 60 +- 10 ps and separated by about 80 ps. This phenomenon is due to a pattern dependent effect of the laser turn-on delay. Theoretical calculations show that for data transmission above 2.2 Gb/s, the laser has to be biased above threshold to avoid excessive (>0.5 dB) jitter induced power penalty.